Lethe Devouring
by Badhbh Catha
Summary: Present tense, 1st person-some abyss guy's POV. ----- Complete version will one day be posted


Disclaimer: It isn't mine.  
  
A/N: Um…this is a religion of sorts, centered on the Abyss. A bit more serious people than your average Pit diver, but just as extreme. And they don't dive, they meditate downwards. It amused me to call their sect an Order. This is an Amber fanfic more by default than anything else. I took a part of the setting and expanded upon it, so don't try to read more of the books into it than there is. I suppose the kid mentioned in the middle could be that Borquist guy Merlin mentioned, but it'd be a stretch. I don't like the second five books, so I have no idea why I choose something mostly from them to write about, but I did. I tried sort of to put bits of Zelazny's style into this, but it was like trying to explain abstract ideas quickly in a language you aren't quite fluent in, so I stopped trying. Eek, I almost used a vocab word in this, but the thesaurus saved me and I found a synonym. I have become bored with insulting my own writing, so fill in the blanks yourself with interesting derogatory comments. Poorly written… blah blah blah… unorganized… blah blah blah… awkward… blah blah blah… you get the idea, go ahead.  
  
To Random: I disagree, I do not believe the writing was explicit enough. However, I have changed the rating, as I figure stories for the most part should be rated according to the strictest (within reason) opinion. I do plan to eventually post a complete version of this fic, with a good deal more philosophic ramblings, and it most certainly will require a higher rating. Thank you for your comment.  
  
  
  
  
  
Regaining conscious awareness at a time of my desire, I lay for a moment in contemplation before rising from my mat. Though I have in the past learned much by meditating upon my dreams, I generally find that it is counter- productive spending overlong in such pursuits. I pull myself up with this in mind, and I don the gray robes that have been my attire for a good part of an eternity. The room I am in is empty but for my mat, and its walls are twenty-seven shades of one color. I assume the posture that emulates the nothing. My balance, at first, is precarious, but the double vision of existing and yet not clears then, and my mind is made open to my suggestion.  
  
Extending what is not my arm, I perceive its absence in a euphoric daze. First, the tips of my fingers are not. I can feel with a tingling sensation as they cease. I can see them, and then I cannot. Piece by piece, my entire body ceases to be, all the while, the elation rising, increasing exponentially to the level where pain and pleasure are one, and I cannot breathe, for my throat constricts and I gasp and cry out, but my cry is silenced, for it does not exist. I draw myself back into being, wary of the dangers of dwelling overlong in a state of induced absence. The endless allure of the Nothing is an addiction few can resist, and fewer would wish to.  
  
My appetites are not sated from the exercise, and I reflect and am pleased that I am today to once again descend into the heights. Such mental exercises are unsatisfying, giving one a tantalizing glimpse of the power that isn't, with no actualization of the true Nothing. I remember with an exhilarated shudder my first decent, and my eyes close as I indulge myself in my favorite vice, memory. The Pit is a sensory overload more potent than any need-deprivation, for it deprives one not of such things as nourishment, but of reality itself. The Self is purified through the plunge into solid nothing, into absence. I have wasted time, and I leave the room.  
  
Coming into the main chamber, I see a man standing in the universal stance of the young. He is curious, I know, but he restrains from looking about himself in the awe that is nonetheless evident in his face. I approach him and stare at him expectantly, a look carefully devised to make him uncomfortable. It has the desired effect.  
  
"I want to experience oneness with the absolute Nothing," he purrs, still with the self-assured, mocking glint in his eyes so common in those who have not felt the purifying blaze of the Pit. Wordless, I lead him to the room in which acolytes are made to teach what little they know to the occasional stragglers, few of whom are serious, who wander in search of answers they have not the patience to glean. We let them learn, but we do not expect most of them to stay long, nor do they. Ours is not a secretive Order. The misguided youth thus delivered, I adjourned to the preparatory room to be properly garbed and anointed, and to collect myself spiritually for my sojourn in the abyssal depths.  
  
I am not myself an initiate of the powers of the Nothing. There are two who are. Only I of any of the Order have seen one of the initiates. It gives me a sort of prestige that has proved useful in the past. It was one of my early descents. I went alone to the Edge, and was preparing myself for the thing, when there withdrew from the Pit not two rods away a great and scaled creature, long and undulating. Its single eye gleaming with an intention I could not comprehend, the great serpent glided sinuously away. The supreme reality of the snake made the Nothing seem all the emptier that day. I stayed longer than is safe in the depths, and the Order is divided as to whether the change they noticed in me then was wrought by the Sighting, or the effects of the abyss. I have found it prudent to let them wonder.  
  
Departing once again alone for the Edge, I stare at the sky, split and fickle, its fluid colors a kaleidoscopic gyre. It made me dizzy when first I saw it, but I have since come to develop a taste for its feverish visage. I continue on.  
  
The Pit is great and imponderable. When I am away, I can never quite believe in it, but now it is before me, and it is a surety. All else is false, and it alone real. It extends in all its hazy glory as far can be seen, and I wonder not for the first time what lies beyond. A paradise, home to gods never realized who dream dreams of reality and laugh unawares? A hell where devils likewise laugh, and torment is as rain? Or, does it end, the Nothing? Can it stretch through time and space unending, suspending possibilities of heaven, or of hell? I laugh now, and chide myself for idle thoughts. The Pit transforms even me into an ideologue.  
  
I go about the process I have come to call grounding. I must root myself to reality, forming a numinous rope of sorts, a stronger and more reliable one even then the physical ropes the Pit divers use, for it binds not one's body, but one's mind to the edge. With it, a drifter can leave the pit when they choose, as long as they are sufficiently gathered mentally, and have not strayed to far, or stayed too long. It is a long and difficult process, grounding, and if not done correctly, one becomes lost to the Nothing. We of the Order do not let those who come to learn descend until their training is quite complete. As it is sacrilege for another to be present when a person descends, there is no one to help first-time drifters should they become overwhelmed. As it is, almost half of all first descents are successful, and two thirds of all second descents.  
  
Still grounding myself, I consider as I always do the opportunity of release. Would it be suicide, to abort the grounding half-finished? Or simply a decision to become a permanent part of the Nothing, unhindered oneness, as it were? The idea is seductive, almost irresistibly so, but always cowardice stays my decision. It is for me the ultimate unknown, and what is not known is feared. Indecision abounds, and I halt in my grounding to attend the thought undivided. My gaze, clouded with contemplation, falls upon the murky depths of the Nothing. That beguiling storm or fog to which I have focused my intentions for so long holds answers, but will not share them. There lies my deliverance, whether to salvation of a kind or to oblivion more bitter than sweet, I cannot know. What would I risk? My existence, only. What value has existence in the face of the Nothing? Oh, but I am afraid.  
  
My decision made, I will myself, clear of mind at last, into the Pit. The rapture of the depths fills me, overloading my senses with the agony and the purest of satisfactions that is the abyss. I moan, intoxicated by the fumes rising off the tendrils of nothingness that hold me, entwined around and through my mind, a tangible force of pure abyss, Pit-energy in its undiluted form. The ultimate union with the Nothing inundates my Self, and there is no longer any distinction between me and the abyss. It is a bacchanalia of emptiness, without the restraints of before. The exhilaration rises and climaxes, a manifestation of ecstasy. I am whole, and then I am none. 


End file.
